Melanie Clifford was the girlfriend of Mark Hughes in 1992. Melanie and Mark initially got on well. However, conflict grew between them over their A-Levels, which studious Melanie took very seriously, whereas Mark realised before his final exam that he was not academic. Mark turned to Rachel, Annie and Joe for support, but Melanie was unsympathetic about his behaviour, feeling he was throwing away his life chances, and she dumped him. A couple of weeks later, Nick Bates and Archie Brooks threw a party at 3 Demdyke Row, to which both Mark and Melanie were separately invited. Mark tried to make things cordial with Melanie again but she was defensive and uninterested. However, when one of the party-goers - a friend of Lorraine Nelson - kept harassing Melanie, Mark stepped in to save the day and threw him out. Melanie expressed her gratitude to Mark for this, and asked him out, in an attempt to rekindle their romance. But she was left deflated when Mark told her he wasn't really interested in their relationship anymore. Melanie returns in August 1992, staying at one of the chalets in the holiday village. By this time Mark is involved with older fling Lisa; he and Melanie are on amicable terms but not close. Later that month, Melanie gets a shock when a man in a clown mask taps on her window. In a later incident, Joe Sugden chases the intruder off and reassures a shaken Melanie. The intruder is later revealed to be Dan.
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